Mapping Information 1 Million Ways

Kera N. Lovell

Hi everyone,

I am a Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hawai’i’s Honolulu Community College campus where I teach courses on the history of American imperialism in Hawai’i. I earned my PhD in American Studies from Purdue University in 2017. My broader research agenda and professional accounts can be found at my main site – www.keralovell.com

Visualizing Space is my bold attempt to organize my research and ideas on visualizing space and information. My book project as an expansion of my dissertation traces the popularity and progression of a particular method of post-World War II protest in which activist groups “liberated” (or squatted on) privately-owned, undeveloped vacant lots and converted those spaces into publicly accessible shared green spaces. This network of People’s Parks served as a radical form of community-based design from below as a reaction to urban renewal, racism, and colonialism.

My dissertation maps how this typology of protest migrated internationally and was adapted by different activist groups and collectives with different political and social agendas. With that task, I seek to explore ways that I can visualize this form of protest beyond the prehistoric and mundane tools of visualization so common in historical monographs – the bar graph, the linear chronology, dots on a map, etc. Ultimately, I was left with one big whopper of a research question – How can visuals be used to add to, build on, and make sense of information that is in dire need of critical analysis?

With a microscopic graphic design background and research and teaching interests in mapping complicated theories and ideas, this blog is my tool for organizing the world of visuality into easily understandable conceptual categories.

Stumble across a great infographic? Want to share some suggestions for visualizing information with me? Send me an email at klovell@purdue.edu or check out my other blogs and websites at www.keralovell.com.